Get Ready for Your Visit

  • Plan for your first visit to be just a bit longer than one hour. It will include discussion and review of current health concerns and health history followed by diagnosis and treatment. 
  • A Health History/Intake Form can be downloaded here, completed and brought with you to you first visit. You may also complete the form in the office. 
  • Dress comfortably if that fits into your day's schedule or change when you arrive. We can provide cover sheeting and/or gowns.
  • Our best advice is eat a light meal or snack an hour or two before treatment. Alcohol and fasting are not recommended. 
  • Follow-up visits take an hour or less.

Needles? Really?

During an acupuncture treatment treatment, a few to 20 and sometimes more, needles are inserted into the skin. They just break through the surface and remain in place 15 to 30 minutes. Unlike hypodermic needles used for injections, acupuncture needles are not blunt, do not have holes in them and do not remove tissue. Instead, they are solid and thin, come to a sharp and smooth point, and glide between the fascia of the dermis. Rarely are they described as painful.

What the Needles Do

  • Acupuncture needles inserted into the dermis (or skin) will direct or redirect the body’s signaling systems:  our central nervous system and hormone-producing glands.
  • Acupuncture needles trigger the release of biochemical signals within nerves and from hormones into the muscles, organs, spinal cord and brain.
  • The signals in turn, influence and instruct these internal self-regulating systems (muscles, organs, spinal cord and brain).
  • One of the most important examples and perhaps most often felt, is the dramatically reduced experience of pain. 

What You Will Feel During Your Treatment

 

Each person experiences acupuncture differently. And each treatment may be experienced differently. The 'needling sensation’ — which is the stimulated 'arrival of Qi' — varies from acupuncture point to point. You may not feel anything at all as the needles go in and while they remain during a treatment. Or, you might feel  tingling or warmth, pressure or pulsing. You might even notice an ‘electric’ sensation: Qi radiating from the point of insertion to another part of the body. All of these are normal needle sensations experienced during an acupuncture treatment.